After watching an emotional tribute to her late mother and fending off an apparently unwanted reunion with her father, Bobby Brown, Whitney Houston's daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown disappeared while the rest of her extended family converged on a local Newark restaurant. Brown's sudden disappearance threw her family into a DEFCON 1 of frantic cell-phone calling in an effort to locate the 18-year-old who had suffered two emotional breakdowns after her mother was found in a hotel bathtub on the eve of the Grammys last weekend. Some family members are even rumored to believe that Brown snuck away from the family to get high.

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Though a spokesperson for the family has assured the nail-biting public that Brown most definitely does not have a drug problem, a family friend has intimated that some members of the family are worried that Brown, the child of two drug-addled parents, is all-too familiar with the vices that many believe precipitated her mother's death. Says the friend,

Cissy [Whitney Houston's mother] and others won't admit out loud that Bobbi Kristina has a drug problem. But they know it and have been trying to keep her straight even before Whitney passed. But losing your mother and the life you're accustomed to all in one day is enough to send anybody off the deep end.

This friend moreover claims that Brown entered rehab for a drug problem earlier in the year (though the family spokesperson wouldn't comment on this) and added that, in Brown, the family sees a younger version of Houston.

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It's a horrible situation for everybody. They tried to save Whitney, and it didn't work. Now with Bobbi Kristina, they fear the same thing is happening again and they won't be able to stop it either. Bobbi Kristina is all Ms. Cissy has left of Whitney. She's so tired, but she's ready to fight again to save her grandbaby.

Hopefully, a sad sequel to the Whitney Houston saga isn't in the cards, but Bobbi Kristina Brown has just been through some heavy shit and if she does have a proclivity for substance abuse, now, in the wake of a traumatic family crisis, would probably be the time for it to manifest itself.